Things new submissive men should probably know, part 3 of many

Or, Stabbity thought of more stuff that new submissive guys might want to know.

One of the questions I see over and over is whether it’s okay to be inexperienced or whether any dom would ever give an inexperienced sub the time of day. I also sometimes see puzzling (to put it nicely) assumptions about more experienced subs.

First of all, there’s nothing wrong with whatever level of experience you have. If you have none, great. That’s how we all started out. If you have tons, great. You have something valuable to share.

For the inexperienced subs out there, it’s not a lack of experience that can put doms off so much as the way that lack of experience and lack of self-awareness often go together. If you’ve never done anything kinky before, doms worry that you’ll abruptly realize you’re not kinky after all and abandon them or assume that kink is all about making your boner happy and irritate the shit out of them and waste their time, or act shocked that women have desires of their own that might not turn you on or even *GASP* actively turn you off.

Fortunately, there are a bunch of things you can do about that. First of all, get some information about kink that doesn’t come from porn. Ideally you should go to a munch and talk to actual kinky people face to face, but if that’s not your thing then I highly recommend reading forums and/or blogs where you can hear from actual kinky people. Just keep in mind that there is a huge amount of bullshit on the internet. If anyone asks you for money, they’re a scammer. If someone sounds like they stepped out of your favourite porno, they’re a scammer. If someone goes on and on about how they were trained by a secret European house/a true old guard mistress/how they’ve been dominant since middle school, they’re lying to make themselves look important and you should take everything they say with a gigantic grain of salt.

Many kinky people are friendly to newbies who are trying to figure themselves out, if you ask politely about something in their profile or something they said in a forum post, you have a good chance of getting a helpful answer. Don’t take it personally if you don’t get a response even if you do everything right, all sorts of things that have nothing to do with you can prevent a person from answering even the best email. Sometimes people get swamped at work. Sometimes people go on vacation. Sometimes people have a bad break up and take a little time away from the scene. Sometimes people just forget stuff and then all of a sudden that message is two months old and they’re embarrassed about saying “Hi person who messaged me weeks and weeks ago, I’m kind of a fuckup and can’t keep track of my own email.” Er, not that that’s ever happened to me or anything.

Another piece of advice for men in general: read/watch/listen to media by women. Why? Because it’ll help you understand that we’re people with unique views of the world who don’t exist to entertain you. One of the most irritating things you can possibly do as a new sub is to act all shocked and horrified that a dominant woman might have her own ideas about how a scene or a relationship should go.

If casual play is something that appeals to you at all, kink organizations will sometimes have events specifically for newbies to try stuff out. In my city we’ll have a party for newbies about once a year with a whole bunch of booths staffed by volunteers (both tops and bottoms) who might let you give/receive a spanking, or a paddling, or a couple of licks from a whip (you probably won’t get to give that one). Even if casual play is your thing, keep in mind that trying something in the context of a stranger giving you a quick demo can be very different from having a full on scene with someone you personally like and want to play with. Basically, don’t write something off as Not Your Kink just because a demo didn’t do it for you.

For people with the cash to spare, seeing a pro can also be helpful. Sometimes you just want to know whether you even like getting flogged/caned/tied up and you don’t want to lead some poor woman on just to find out that you’re only a bottom in your fantasies. Now, pros can have very similar problems with total newbies as lifestyle doms – if you’ve never done this before you’re much more likely to get cold feet, and for a pro that’s an hour (or so) where they suddenly don’t make any money. Expect to pay some kind of deposit to make an appointment and accept that not all pros are interested in seeing someone with absolutely no references (it’ll say so on her website if that’s the case). Keep in mind that pros are often part of the scene – the pro you were a dick to might very well be best friends with the hot dom at the munch you have your eye on.

Don’t forget, being inexperienced can be an asset. Some doms have run into far too many guys who expect them to act just like their old mistress did and are sick of having to explain that no really, they’re different people who want different things. Sometimes it’s just easier to deal with someone who isn’t dragging around all that baggage. It can also be a huge amount of fun to introduce people to awesome stuff they’re been fantasizing about for ages and finally get to experience. And honestly, some people are just turned on by being someone’s first dom.

That all might sound really complicated but all you need to do is make a bit of an effort to figure your shit out and treat dominant women like we’re people.

For the experienced subs out there, it’s not that having experience means you’re used goods, it’s that your new dom is going to worry that you’ll expect her to be exactly like your old dom.

Some guys seem to assume that having some experience means they’re somehow pre-trained and less work for a new dom. That’s bullshit, to be blunt. There is no universal standard of training. I don’t fucking care that so and so trained you, I’m not her. The fact that you think that’s relevant only tells me you don’t understand that doms are unique individuals.

Think about it this way: if you date Amy and then Brianna, would you tell Brianna that you’re a good boyfriend because you know what Amy likes? No, that would be completely fucking ridiculous. Amy and Brianna are different people, making Amy happy doesn’t say anything about your ability to make Brianna happy.

There’s also a special case of this for guys who’ve spent a lot of time seeing pros: lifestylers can get worried that you’re going to expect them to act like a pro. That is, to break out all the fancy fetish gear every time and do what you like, not what they like and always be up for a scene if you want one. This is where you need the self-awareness to know what you actually want. If you enjoyed playing with a pro but you want a relationship too and/or a more pervasive d/s dynamic than you can realistically maintain with someone you see once a month, great! On the other hand, if you just want someone to top you for free and otherwise act like a pro, suck it up and keep paying the pro. Trust me, everyone will be happier that way. You don’t want to be the self-absorbed asshole that your former girlfriend warns all her friends to stay the hell away from.

To be clear, it’s absolutely okay to want the pro dom experience. Maybe you’re extremely busy, maybe you don’t have the emotional energy for a relationship, maybe you need to keep your kink sharply separated from the rest of your life. As long as you’re honest about it and don’t try to badger some poor woman into pro domming you for free, it’s totally cool to want what you want.

Another potential issue with a guy who’s played with other doms, pro or not, is it can be intimidating to play with someone who’s played with someone who is really good at it and wonder if you measure up. Especially if he’s played with someone who literally does it for a living, it can be really easy to start worrying about whether you’re actually any good at this or whether he’s wishing he was playing with someone who had better aim.

Being more experienced can be an asset. It’s no worse than having had previous vanilla relationships. Sure, there’s a risk you have more baggage than someone who’s never dated before, but at the same time that also tells me that at least one person thought you were worth dating. Net gain! Plus it’s really helpful if you can tell your dom that you love x, like y okay, and can’t take much z.

The same advice I gave inexperienced guys still applies: all you need to do is make a bit of an effort to figure your shit out and treat dominant women like we’re people.

No matter how much experience you have, if you have a bit of self-awareness and can build an emotional connection with someone, odds are good she won’t care how much experience you have. Keep in mind that different people like different things for reasons that have nothing to do with you, and don’t try to be someone you’re not.

7 thoughts on “Things new submissive men should probably know, part 3 of many

  1. >> If someone sounds like they stepped out of your favourite porno, they’re a scammer.

    Ha ha I wish more people would accept that fact! :)) Your post made me really sad for some reason. I’m a dom woman, very new to bdsm. I remember asking for your advice somewhere in this blog about a year ago. You recommended me to go to a munch. At that time I though it was a great idea. But since I was a little nervous to go right away (okay, I was scares shitless (˵¯͒ བ¯͒˵) ), I decided to test the waters and learn some more about people from my local scene. There were no websites for dom women, but there was a forum for submissive men, which I decided to check. So I opened the forum (all the while stressing about not being confident enough, of course) and checked the first message, which was entitled “New sub here, should I go to a munch?” Very excited, I opened the thread to find out that most of the replies were in the lines of “Been there, found a lot of fat desperate women looking for sex”. I’m not exactly fat, but that offended me somehow. I have insecurities, I’m young and inexperienced, I can be awkward around people, I’m definitely not super model material, very average looking. I remember reading that forum, looking for more info about munches, reading again and again that “dominant women aren’t hot enough, munches suck”. After a while I just lost it. I remember crying like an idiot for the whole evening, and then thinking “F**k it”. Now I’m not throwing a pity party here, I’m over that experience! But I’ve lost all interest in joining any bdsm communities. I can’t help but think that if I had read a couple of posts like this one, my experience would have been completely different.

    • This all boils down to entitled men thinking that women exist for them. The profile that sounds like porn? Well OF COURSE this young, hot woman is just sitting around dying to make some dude’s fantasy come true, with no mention of any desires or preferences of her own. Sounds legit. And OF COURSE munches are supposed to comprise a bunch of hot chicks just waiting around for a guy to choose them as his fantasy fulfillment machine. Sigh.

      Reminds me of when a co-worker at an old office job talked about going to a nude beach while on vacation. He bitterly said “None of the women there were even hot!”

      “Maybe people went to the nude beach because it feels nice to have the sun on your skin and not actually to put on a show for the tourists,” I said pointedly. Dude looked at me with total incomprehension. Women, living their lives for reasons other than boners? That’s unpossible!

      Anyway. I’m sorry you stumbled over a cache of catty dudes bitching about fat chicks at munches (and relieved that I went to my first munch without having stumbled over a similar cache of local dudes bitching – I’m sure there probably is one).

      • Wait, giving boners isn’t the whole purpose of nude beaches?! IMPOSSIBRU.

        Thank you, but don’t be sorry! I’m over it. 🙂 I’m actually little angry that I was so upset by those stupid posts. I probably was in a vulnerable place at that moment, and I didn’t expect to see such comments on a very popular, and otherwise decent, website. Much later, I realized how stupid the whole website was. For instance it had a whole section on “How to turn your woman into a dominant of your dreams”, which is hilarious on its own. It included precious pieces of advice such as “start gently” with “foot fetish” and “with asking her to pee on you”. (o´艸`)

    • People really suck sometimes. I will bet you any amount of money that zero of the men complaining about “fat desperate women looking for sex” were model material themselves. Like perversecowgirl said, bratty manchildren feel entitled to supermodels who exist to fulfill their every fantasy when those manchildren show up with nothing to offer but a hardon.

      After a while I just lost it. I remember crying like an idiot for the whole evening, and then thinking “F**k it”.

      That’s not idiotic at all, of course you’d feel like shit if you thought a munch was going to be a welcoming space for people like you and it turned out to be full of assholes. If it makes you feel any better, any woman who actually met those sad bastards standards would be able to hold out for a hot millionaire. I mean, if I were skinny and gorgeous I certainly wouldn’t settle for the kind of badly groomed schlub who whines and cries about how the women at the munch aren’t hot enough.

      If munches aren’t for you, they’re just not for you. I’ve met plenty of perfectly nice people online, and as a plus it’s a lot easier to block jerks that way 🙂

      • Thank you! I’m not attracted to manchildren anyway. 🙂 Only to men. 🙂

        But I wonder why so many whiny posts. This is completely illogical! It might have been the only such community in my city. Surely, it’s logical to assume that a woman might check the forum before going to any sort of meeting? And logically, submissive men would want to welcome dominant women, not turn them away.

  2. Yeah. It’s the lack of self-awareness thing.

    I’m fine with n00bs; my ex-sub was completely new to BDSM. What really drives me up a fuckin’ tree is the guys who freely admit that they’re new to kink and don’t know anything…and then go on to make a bunch of assumptions about kink and the people who practice it. And you generally can’t get them to UNDERSTAND that they’re making assumptions, or to let their assumptions go.

    So like, a guy will come into a discussion group all “I’m totally new and have no idea how D/s works whatsoever. Anyway, I love the idea of submitting to a woman but I’m super strong and decisive and manly, so does that mean I’m not really a sub?”

    And you try to tell him that he’s assuming, there, that manly = dominant (which, if true, would logically mean that dominant women all look like butch dykes, but I betcha five grand that this is not how he pictures them…). And that he’s implying, by extension, that the male subs in the group are all weak and effeminate and wishy-washy, which is pretty rude, especially when you’re asking them for input. And in response to this constructive criticism, dude just…whines. I’ve seen versions of that conversation play out at least fifty times and I’ve never, EVER seen one of these guys have an “ah-ha” moment/unpack all their cultural baggage/apologize sincerely for being a presumptuous dillhole.

    Newness, I’m fine with. Dumbness, I’m not.

    • Newness, I’m fine with. Dumbness, I’m not.

      THIIIIIIIIIS. I’ve seen enough “I’m totally new and have no idea how D/s works whatsoever. Anyway, I love the idea of submitting to a woman but I’m super strong and decisive and manly, so does that mean I’m not really a sub?” guys to last me about a thousand years. If you’re that interested in kink, read a goddamn sticky. I promise it won’t hurt, and maybe you won’t make a complete ass of yourself afterward.

      ’ve seen versions of that conversation play out at least fifty times and I’ve never, EVER seen one of these guys have an “ah-ha” moment/unpack all their cultural baggage/apologize sincerely for being a presumptuous dillhole.

      Yup. Some submissive guys are amazing, and some of them make me wonder how on earth they square the idea of worshipping women with their total refusal to listen to a single woman about anything ever under any circumstances.

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